dtjohnson writes: "On August 1, 2010, an entire
hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and
exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton
clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had
witnessed something big. It was so big, it may have shattered old
ideas about solar activity."

Previously, solar scientists had considered solar activity to be
localized and isolated but the August 1 eruption led to the insight
that all localized activity (i.e. 'sunspots') were manifestations of
much bigger interrelated solar magnetic activity lurking below the
surface. This has implications for models of the Earth's climate
which have modeled solar output as a relatively
constant input to the Earth's climate varying only slightly on the
11-year sunspot cycle.